Exclusive Interview: Michael Cera, Hannah Gross, and Sophia Lillis Discuss Their New Film, The Adults

Michael Cera, Hannah Gross, and Sophia Lillis are the stars of the must-see new film, The Adults.

Written and directed by Dustin Guy Defa, The Adults follows Eric (Cera) as he returns home for a short visit and finds himself caught between reuniting with his sisters and chasing a victory with his old poker group. As the trip extends, Eric finds it increasingly difficult to avoid confrontations and revelations as his carefully constructed façade of his adulthood gives way to old childhood conflicts. While Maggie (Lillis) attempts to recreate the intimate world the three of them once shared, Eric and Rachel (Gross) are faced with the divide between their childhood selves and the adults they are now.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Michael, Hannah, and Sophia about The Adults, approaching the dynamic between their three characters, and more.

Please Note: This interview was conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike during the Tribeca Film Festival. We stand in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, and will not be conducting further interviews until a fair deal is reached.

PC: Michael, you were a part of this project in its early stages. How did that prior relationship with Dustin and the trust that you built allow you to take agency over your character and bring elements of yourself to Eric’s very nuanced journey?
Michael: Dustin is very collaborative. Hannah and I were sort of looped in on the script as Dustin was developing it. We were in discussions with him as he was evolving it, so we were part of the process. But as far as the character, Dustin created the character as far as the writing and the creation. I was reading it as an actor who could potentially play the part. There’s nothing that’s personally from my own life. It was just my interpretation of what he wrote. But he’s very collaborative. We all had a voice in bringing the scenes and everything to life.

PC: Hannah, time is never a luxury when you’re creating a film, and it’s even rarer to have the opportunity to rehearse, which you had with this project. How beneficial was that especially as you created the unspoken tension between the siblings and the complex nature of their relationships?
Hannah: It was so crucial. We felt very lucky that we had a couple of virtual sessions.

Michael: We had at least one read-through.

Hannah: Then we had about a week or two of rehearsals together. Getting to practice the songs which Michael wrote and very patiently taught me was really fun.

Michael: It was very fun.

Hannah: Then the four of us got together to work through the script and the characters and came up with those voices together. It was pretty ingenious of Dustin to have these childhood characters developed and show those snippets of these characters’ childhoods through them and the choreographies that they created, which all alludes to a lot more. We didn’t have to come up with anything other than the voices and the incredible choreography.

PC: Sophia, in recent years, you’ve built this illustrious career in the fantasy realm, and I believe you were filming Dungeons and Dragons before this. How much does your preparation change when you’re playing in these different genres? How much of your own personal experiences did you draw on as you explored your character’s journey of self-discovery?
Sophia: They’re very different movies and focus on different things. A lot of Dungeons and Dragons was very action-oriented. A lot of it was more of the physicality, and I really need to be able to do that in that particular scene—rolling around, dodging things, and hitting people. It’s very physically taxing. This is physically taxing in a different way. It’s less fighting and more dancing, and it’s more emotionally taxing above anything else. So it really does differ from project to project. What helped me a lot was the rehearsals and getting to talk with Hannah and Michael.

The Adults is in theaters now.